Training the Vince Gironda Way

Vince Gironda–the name reverberates. Though he’s been dead for a couple of years now, Vince Gironda’s training ideas still live on–or should. Perhaps no trainer in the history of bodybuilding has been more controversial, loved, hated, disputed, ignored, embraced or misunderstood than the legendary champion of the lean, symmetrical, Apollo-type physique was. It’s unfortunate, but says more about the world of bodybuilding than about Vince, that he became known to some only for his opposition to squats, his advocacy of the meat and eggs zero carb diet (a.k.a. “meat and water”), his tirades against running and aerobics, and numerous other bodybuilding rants that a lot of people found fault with. Some simply felt that his ideas on training and nutrition were okay for Hollywood stars, but not applicable for hardcore bodybuilders, and dismissed him. What’s been overlooked is the great value of his approach, his teachings, and the great contributions the man himself made to bodybuilding.

What Vince Gironda really seemed to be about was training intelligently and utilizing nutrition intelligently, to create or re-create your body. It’s true the style of physique he favored–lean, proportionate, defined, with aesthetic shape, has fallen almost completely out of fashion in bodybuilding, yet men such as Steve Reeves, Frank Zane, Chris Dickerson, Bob Paris and Serge Nubret and others–none of whom were explicit followers of Vince, exemplified this type of physique, and won more than a few honors with it. Larry Scott and Mohammed Makkawy, who trained directly under Gironda’s supervision, did very well, as did numerous others, most of whom aren’t famous, but who nevertheless achieved great results using Vince Gironda’s methods. Drug free trainers can profit greatly from many of his ideas, and even more so from understanding and incorporating his approach. His ways and his approach as well as the integrity with which he passionately lived his bodybuilding convictions are his true legacy. Though he is gone, the wisdom of his ways is still available to us all.

Approximately 5 typed pages, 2300 words